1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an arrangement for signaling in a voice communication system with optically fed components in which the light wave guides, in addition to the transmission of the communications signals, also serve for the transmission of the signals required for the connection and disconnection, as well as for the transmission of energy in the form of light for the energy supply of the subscriber station.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, light wave guides consisting of optical fibers have been developed which permit broad band signals to be transmitted with relatively low attenuation. These properties make light wave guides particularly suited for employment in upper network levels of telephone systems in which a greater plurality of telephone signals are simultaneously transmitted on a time division multiplex basis or on a frequency division multiplex basis. If the transmission lines in upper network levels are constructed of light wave guides, the employment of light wave guides in the lower network levels up to the individual subscriber stations also gains in interest, if only for reasons of employing a uniform transmission technology. This is particularly true when a need for higher frequency band width also exists for the subscriber stations than can be made available by the standard, electric telephone subscriber lines.
A communications system is known from the German published application No. 2,708,606 in which there is provided on the subscriber side an optical hookswitch and a further optical selective switch with whose assistance by different actuations of the switches a plurality of operating states of the subscriber station can be set, in particular, the preparedness state for the reception of an incoming call, the conversation state in which both incoming communications signals are supplied to an opto-acoustical transducer and outgoing communication signals are supplied to an acousto-optical modulator, and the signaling state in which dial information input by the subscriber is converted into corresponding optical signals and transmitted to a switching center. In addition to the optical transfer switches, an optical hybrid, an optical coupling point and an optical diplexer are required for the subscriber station of the known communication system in order to fulfill these functions.